Purely by my own ‘common sense’ I decided that if my body doesn’t deal well with carbohydrate I should try simply cutting them out. I have been on my diet for 11 months now, have lost the middle weight and look of normal proportions and feel much better.

My blood results are good, cholesterol is good even though I refuse to take statins and I am never hungry. I eat protein at every meal, not more than before though, plenty of colourful veg and salad, butter, cream, cheese and enjoy my food. I won’t pretend I don’t miss crusty bread or lovely chips but I don’t want them because I know my blood sugar will shoot up within minutes if I have them.

I have no fruit either apart from, berries and cherries which I sometimes cook and sweeten with ‘stevia’.

I hope this helps someone as I found it very hard at first defying current medical and dietary advice but I am glad I did.

My Mom has been on a low-carb diet for a little over a year. She has lost about 70 lbs and has been building muscle – she’s 67!

I’m convinced, so I’m trying it, too. I recently switched to butter. I also started putting heavy cream in my coffee instead of half-and-half. I don’t know if that’s the thing to do, but I love coffee and I love cream in it.

Thinking about it, though, is this so surprising? Is it really that wrong to feel a near-religious zeal when it comes to what you take into your body? Hasn’t food always been linked to faith, whether it is Friday fish or sacred cows, forbidden pork or untouchable liver? Don’t many religions teach that the body is a temple? The thing that struck me most as I read Weston Price’s work is that the modern, science-driven approach to eating is the real anomaly.

That being said, I believe that patience and love are the root of any real religious feeling. So, even though food is important–maybe even vitally important–there has to be some room for allowing other people to eat just as they please, even if we’re personally convinced it is going to kill them.

Combine above with a high-PUFA, low-fiber, high-carb, high-protein diet and you increase your risk of SyndromeX, diabetes, hypertension, CVD, arthritis, cancer, etc.

I sympathize with the issue of the “cult-like fervor” of WAPF converts. For people who were raised on the myths of “margarine=good, butter=bad; chicken breast=good, steak=bad” — as I was — having that dogma turned on its head tends to lead to a sense of having found the Rosetta stone of health; however, experience has proved to me that a healthy diet is only *one* factor is overall health. And unfortunately, changing one’s diet in adulthood is never going to significantly undo the damage incurred from a childhood of “fake food”. Much to my dismay.

The WAPF Foundation is perhaps over-critical of vegan diets. I have met, online and in real life, vegans of many years who appeared to be in good health…

The caveat is, *multi-generational* veganism is unsustainable. Vegan mothers will have less robust children (and indeed many pregnant vegetarians are forced by bodily cravings to modify their diets), and if god forbid the children are raised without access to dietary cholesterol and vitamin-rich fats, they will face serious fertility problems as adults. If somehow they manage to have children, the fertility and health problems will be even greater in the next generation.

Do I know this for certain? No — but there is strong circumstantial evidence from the Pottenger studies and other anecdotal data about children raised on skim milk vs. whole, vegetarian societies vs. omnivore societies (e.g. “among immigrants in London from the Indian subcontinent, vegetarian Hindu Asians were found to have an 8.5 fold increased risk of tuberculosis, compared to Muslims who ate meat and fish daily.”), and so on. I was also recently reminded (watching a Nova program) that it was the switch to an animal/flesh-intensive diet that allowed our hominid ancestors to develop the height and brain capacity that made us self-aware, technologically adept, etc. (The science behind this change in bodily structure is quite fascinating.) Some of the most ancient hominid sites show large collections of roasted, cracked marrow bones, or grilled shellfish.

In any case, your commitment to “compassionate eating” is commendable, but if nothing else I’d recommend consuming fresh local seafood and quality butter as a supplement to your diet. Shrimp, mussels, oysters, etc. are barely sentient, they are wild, and very healthy. Dairy is quite compassionate when bought from local farmers. As Michael Pollan noted, nutritional science is in its infancy, and there are many micronutrients that are as yet undiscovered; abstaining from all animal substances in the belief that one can find a good combination of plant food to replace it is, frankly, naive. Particularly if one desires to have children.

My two cents.